Inflammatory Opinion:
The Gaming Game
On April 28, 2006, truthout.org published a Perspective article by journalist Jason Leopold entitled, "Fitzgerald to Seek Indictment of Rove," in which were written the following words:Despite vehement denials by his attorney, who said this week that Karl Rove is neither a "target" nor in danger of being indicted in the CIA leak case, the special counsel leading the investigation has already written up charges against Rove, and a grand jury is expected to vote on whether to indict the Deputy White House Chief of Staff sometime [sic] next week, sources knowledgeable about the probe said Friday [April 28, 2006] afternoon.As of the dateline of this post on May 5, 2006, no media outlet has indicated that the grand jury to which Mr. Leopold referred had issued any indictment against Mr. Rove or anyone else in the matter of the outing of intelligence operative Valerie Plame. Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney overseeing the investigation into the matter, has made no indication of a plan to call a press conference to announce indictments; and truthout.org has thus far today been silent on the matter despite having issued more than 30 of its news link e-mails since the article referenced above was published a week ago. On the same date that truthout.org published Mr. Leopold's article, MSNBC was reporting that no indictments would be issued within the next week-and-a-half.
Mr. Leopold's colorful history has been chronicled previously: Guerilla News Network, while more or less confirming Leopold's version of events in a dust-up with Salon over an Enron story, nevertheless gave the following characterization: "Leopold has had trouble in the past producing verifiable sources." That Enron matter came to embroil such highly respected journalists as Paul Krugman.
Mr. Leopold's latest speculative journalistic venture masquerading as fact has ensnared a number of bloggers, hoping as they did that a journalist had a nearly indisputable inside source who knew exactly what was about to happen and when it would come down.
This will be a relatively short lecture.
No one—I repeat, no one—in the Valerie Plame scandal wears a white hat.
Valerie Plame, herself, was a non-official cover operative working first for the Central Intelligence Agency and later possibly for the State Department. Hers was the business of lies: her career was one of misrepresenting herself to those from whom she could extract information that could then be refined and issued to the intelligence community for further refinement, analysis, and synthesis. Spies are not above killing people; it happens, sometimes of necessity, sometimes of motivation frightfully less. Valerie Plame may be a hero of the state, but she is not the stuff of admiration by those less inclined to a life of subterfuge, manipulation, and the ruin of others.
Her husband, Joseph Wilson, has displayed a curiously consistent behavior bordering on self-promotion. He went to Niger at the suggestion by his wife, a consummate insider, to certain CIA employees. He had no obvious, prior credentials as an expert in document authentication, and yet that was his mission to Niger: to determine the authenticity of one or several documents rendering evidence that Saddam Hussein was trying to procure yellowcake from the African state. That the document was a forgery is separate from Mr. Wilson's involvement. That he was willing to publicly denounce a sitting President of the United States for using that false evidence as pretext for war is admirable, but only to a certain extent: it will never be a matter of more than blind speculation how much Mr. Wilson cared about the venality of the Bush Administration and how much he cared about putting himself into the spotlight that he has worked ever since then so diligently to hold upon himself through his spouse.
Those in the White House who planned and executed the outing of Valerie Plame acted in a wholly self-serving manner that became, because of the national security implications of the scheme, sedition against the United States of America. They who cart obsessive vengeance against political opponents, willful destruction of our government, and defiance of standing law to the door of madness number many, and they infect the halls of power in Washington from the White House to the CIA to the Department of State to the Treasury to the Justice Department and even into the federal judiciary. Their names are legion: Cheney, Feith, Powell, Bolton, Abrams, Wurmser, Rice, Hanna, Card, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Negroponte, and Alito, to name but a very few of the neo-conservatives, Dominionists, and extremists of other and varied stripes of a political discourse degraded by perversions from a better human spirit that would seek civility and progress.
Robert Novak hid behind the crumbling wall of journalistic authority to further the scheme of White House insiders. He then went on to become curiously, even fascinatingly, immune to public, rough treatment by a federal prosecutor for his role. It is utterly bizarre that the man who actually disclosed the name of the operative has suffered no legal punishment whatsoever for what he did.
Judith Miller used the cover of a national, formerly reputable, newspaper, The New York Times, to promote through disinformation a pro-war agenda that has led to a draining, long-term conflict that has killed and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis, killed and maimed tens of thousands of American soldiers, and sent the federal budget deficits into territory that threatens permanent degradation of the American dominance on the stage of global finances. Ms. Miller had become close to Valerie Plame long before the outing of the latter. Ms. Miller's facile work on a book on weapons of mass destruction gave her an excuse to come into contact with Ms. Plame. Whether Judith Miller was playing her own hand or was an asset of some foreign interest, Valerie Plame probably understood that Ms. Miller's rapproachment was not entirely what it seemed on its face. Miller was trying to game a CIA operative to get into her close confidence. To what end that would serve is subject to speculation, but it is not beyond the realm of reasonable speculation that Miller knew before Libby and Rove started spilling beans that Plame was a non-official cover operative. It is very likely the case, in fact, that Miller did not need I. Lewis Libby, a fundamentally stupid man, to tell her information from the National Intelligence Estimate about Plame’s status.
And finally, Patrick Fitzgerald must be noted. He is a U.S. Attorney; he has successfully prosecuted all manner of scum and in the process has left more than a few unheralded and innocent lives damaged or disrupted. That's what prosecutors do: if they want something, they will use the inordinate power of their station to get it. They are not bound to always tell the truth; in fact, because of the white circle federal judges place around their courts with regard to truthfulness of officers of the court, what goes on outside that area can be and often is troubling to civil libertarians. The experience of a grand jury—as a witness or as a juror—can be life-altering. As a witness, you have no right to counsel present, and if you try to protect yourself with claims of constitutional rights or even common decency, a federal prosecutor grilling you will trot right down to the presiding judge's chambers and prevail upon said judge to virtually hang you in the street; and almost without exception, the judge will comply as if the U.S. Attorney has an affirmative relationship with the court utterly absence from any relationship the citizen has with the Constitution. And if you are a juror, may God help you if you make that prosecutor angry. You could end up being physically hauled into an isolated room by that prosecutor, court reporter in tow, for a session you'll never forget. Think about democracy and the rule of law; then think about grand juries: what you believe about civil rights and liberties in this nation should vanish into thin air.
Jason Leopold is just one of many journalists who have been gamed. The litany of claims about Karl Rove's imminent indictment goes back at least to the late Summer of 2003, when journalists for reputable news media outlets were predicting that the Deputy White House Chief of Staff was on the verge of being charged with crimes. Since then, the waves of rumors have lapped up from time to time, with each cycle being characterized by fewer and fewer seasoned journalists biting. But invariably, every time one journalist from the more reputable world of the mainstream—or in Mr. Leopold's case, formerly from that more reputable world—opens the door and declares that indictments are imminent, those below in the journalistic food chain have a feeding frenzy and in so doing are handed a bomb that hurts their credibility.
None of us are immune to this frailty. It is part of learning how to be wise, seasoned journalists that we occasionally get caught reporting what is not so. We get better as we go along, and we develop not just a sense of who is and who is not a good upstream source, but we also gather a forensic ability to understand what makes sense and what doesn't. Part of that is asking not just who is providing us with information, but also what that person's motivations are.
Mr. Leopold might have obtained his information from sources playing Karl Rove's hand. Rove has gamed the media before and nearly wrecked careers in the process. Mr. Leopold could otherwise have obtained his information from those close to Mr. Fitzgerald, a man whose utter contempt for journalists has resulted in the government's long-sought elimination of the fragile and wholly informal doctrine of journalists' source confidentiality. It is no mere coïncidence that the very same government that now so rabidly militates to secrecy chose to field into the Valerie Plame scandal investigation a prosecutor who has successfully destroyed the very most essential means by which a free press could frustrate that drive to secrecy. Mr. Fitzgerald is an agent of the state; to the extent that the state comes to see its people as unworthy of the full and open truth, the duty-bound agent of that state will jealously and with prejudice serve to separate it from guardianship of the will of its people.
Here's the inside scoop. Karl Rove will be indicted next week.
Or he won't be indicted next week.
Now, take that information and run with it; and always, always be suspicious of your source, even when it's the Dark Wraith speaking to you.
Thus, once again, has the Dark Wraith spoken.
Published 5/05/2006 10:16:00 PM
<< 55 Comments Total
Play much chess? Though I would say Risk would be more your style. I used to play Risk in college (chess too). One of our cadre was a megalomaniac I called 'The Kaiser'- mostly to rile him; though he claimed direct decent from Wilhelm himself - and he came from the right side of the blanket. Looked just like der Kaiser (sans mustache). It was this kid’s one claim to fame, and he flaunted it as promiscuously as any two dollar whore. Risk was the only game he ever played. We could never get him to join in the regular Saturday night poker soirée (I’d usually sit in after the show). He dressed up to play Risk – complete with sword (said it was a family heirloom). During play, he would often proffer up red herrings whose sole purpose was simple sleight of hand. He had one major flaw, though - and I exploited it for all it was worth. His temper was tied to his pride. Prick him there - and the explosion was predictable, and quantifiable. As soon as he knew he'd been had, the board would go flying and off he would storm. You might say I had beguiled him, though he’d never admit defeat. You beguile; but in a far different way. Using misdirection, you lead your reader down clearly marked paths, then shift the sand they’ve only just realized they are standing upon. Very neat. You make your point obliquely. A pox on both their houses. There’s barely enough good in the entire lot to make up one moral person. I get it.
As an aside: I can personally attest to how nefarious District Attorneys can be. They had me arrested; hauled off on a private plane – all to ensure my testimony against a serial killer I had tried to warn them about before he committed the final set of murders for which he was on trial. Before arresting me in the back porch of my mother’s home during vacation from my tenure in Japan – they flew to Japan; questioning all of my friends, getting me effectively canned from my job by saying I was being sought in connection with a murder. After corralling me, they tried to force my complicity in covering up their monumental stupidity with threats and cajoling. I was told the man I would be testifying against was, in all probability, the infamous Zodiac Killer (probably a lie – I didn’t trust anything they said). I was ordered not to reveal - even if asked by defense council on the stand - that the perpetrator had been stalking me prior to the murders; and finally I was promised adequate compensation for all the trouble I was being put to.
Everything was a bald-faced lie. Including the promise of reimbursement. I did testify; but I did it for the victims. And I told the absolute truth – no hedging, no mendacity – just the plain, unvarnished truth. Eight years later, when for some reason the killer obtained a new trial, I was once again contacted by the District Attorneys office; and once again they threatened my home and my livelihood to get me on that plane. So though I appreciate Fitzgerald and I hope he doesn’t allow himself to be distracted by Washington’s ingrained sleight of hand – I know he’s as much of a thug as those he prosecutes. Because you are indeed right. There are no white hats in this business.
Thank you, Fat Lady Sings.
The Dark Wraith isn't the only one whose colorful life has earned him a jaded pair of opera glasses through which to watch the show go on.
"Here's the inside scoop. Karl Rove will be indicted next week.
Or he won't be indicted next week."
Good call.
In the exact science of math as it pertains to the lottery, odds are predicated on many things. But getting right down to the actual fact, you only have two chances; you either win or lose; doesn't matter how many tickets you buy unless you buy them all.
And...'you know you've been on the internet too long when bad spelling and grammar don't bother you any longer.' None of us - are - more aware of that anymore. Sorry, had to nitpik. Just in fun. Don't be mad.
Good morning, Dark Wraith.
I found some laughter at the two choices you pose. They certainly make sense to me:)
Reading your article reminds me to take everything with a grain of salt. It's too bad that there are so many underhanded games going on with our govt and the many people who surround them in any manner.
The experience of a grand jury—as a witness or as a juror—can be life-altering. Makes me realize there are many things I hope never to have experience with.
Morning DW,
Well, Rove being indicted would have been a nice birthday present for me this past week, but I guess will chalk that up to trying to sell xmas cards for a pony I was positive I could take care of in the crappy garage behind our apartment building when I was a kid. In the city no less. Dreams.
And Fat Lady Sings, I am sorry.
As McGovern said the other day "..you call this America?"
Did some grocery shopping yesterday and was asked by a very polite clerk during a mundane conversation about the weather etc, if I a Christian. I replied that no I was not a Christian but a human being. I said it quite politely and matter of factly but it did end the conversation.
Good morning, Father Tyme. Thank you for commenting.
Being an English grammar teacher who specializes in Old, Middle, and Early-Modern English, I am keenly aware that even the best grammarians can on occasion make a mistake. That having been noted, 'none' is a plural pronoun.
The misunderstanding comes from the incorrect assumption that 'none' derives from 'no one'—as in 'not one'—which is obviously singular; however, 'none' does not have that provenance. The word 'none' comes to us from the basket of Old English pronouns, each of which was inflected to the tense, mood, or other feature of its verb. This was the hallmark of Old English: word morphology superceded syntax. We call languages like this "synthetic"; we call languages that use word order "analytic." When the Normans occupied England, they brough with them Middle French and Latin, both of which were more or less pure, synthetic languages. Strangely, under the pressure of these dominant languages of the occupiers, English began a remarkable process of simplification. Inflection virtually vanished over a period of less than a century.
All that remains of that former time are occasional oddities—"fossils" if you will—of the ancient way of our mother tongue. An example of this is the third person singular form of regular verbs: I look, you look, they look, we look; but he looks. There it is: a fossil, an inflection in the third person singular!
Dig through the language, Father Tyme, and you'll find many of them: words, word endings, root vowel inflections, turns of phrasing. They are the reminders that language, even though it changes, always carries in its core the story of its beginnings. But you must be careful in such explorations; sometimes a fossil looks as if it had been attached to one beast, but in fact it was tethered to a whole different animal.
The Dark Wraith has speaked... er, has spoken.
Good morning, Old White Lady.
As Father Tyme noted, most uncertainty in the universe can be reduced to a two-state model. That logical assumption is challenged in some philosophies, which claim that more than two states are needed to adequately set forth situations: 'true' or 'false' just doesn't cut it.
Perhaps.
Then again, perhaps not.
The Dark Wraith splits the difference.
And by the way Father Tyme, it did not take the Internet to get me used to bad grammar and spelling.
I have taught modern American college students for more than 25 years.
The Dark Wraith can now read even a Sophomore's essay without turning into a raging beast.
Good morning, elf.
So help me Thor, that question was posed of me this semester by a student. I answered in my usual, direct manner: "What a rude question!"
I should point out that there is a long-standing rumor that I'm a Pagan. That, or I'm a Jew. Either way, it doesn't sit well with the evangelical Christians among the students and faculty.
That's the price one pays for not wearing one's religious convictions on one's sleeve. In my case, that would be difficult anyway, given that I always roll my sleeves up when I'm lecturing.
The Dark Wraith thinks his consistently all-black attire really says it all.
good morning dark wraith:
Here's the inside scoop. Karl Rove will be indicted next week.
Or he won't be indicted next week.
the line to follow:
either way, who's to notice?
rove reminds me of some of the more distasteful people i served with in the military. bankrupt of morals, devoid of shame or restraint, yet, effective in battle. efficient ruthless killers that when the feces was in the fan, you wanted in your line. as soon as the gunfire stopped you regretted having to rely on them. that's rove. they want one more election out of him before they throw him to the dust heap with dick morris (anybody else smell a comeback?) yes, indeed, nobody gets a white hat here. it also reminds me of high society divorces where you feel like saying "he did it, she did it, sell the kids to the arabs, make them both get jobs and fade from our sight. . " by the time anything resembling justice rolls around my gag reflex will be to sorely tested.
mr. benson remembers now that he is a jingle whore with a tawdry history of drug abuse and other misconducts to reprehensible for mention in polite society. there's no moral high ground for him to occupy anywhere. . .oops, my bad.
Good afternoon, Stephen.
Did you ever read The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli? At one point in the treatise, he describes the hiring by a tyrant of a brutish, sadistic man to collect taxes.
If you have read the book, you'll know how the tyrant uses the thug and, most notably, how the tyrant deals with the thug in the end.
The lesson for Mr. Bush is obvious. That he waited too long to carry out the final step is telling.
And, yes, I know exactly the type of military human-animal you describe. As I recall, my greatest fear was always that those few guys like that were going to turn on someone in their own ranks. I did see it happen once, but it was rare that they would. Still and all, it has always made me sick at my stomach to know for a fact that most of those guys would eventually go back into civilian life, where they would have normal jobs, spouses, and children.
One of them, I knew for years after. Such a mess.
Now, of course, not only will we have the garden variety of those sadists in the civilian population, but we'll also have the torturers, the interrogators, and a whole host of newly branded creatures among us.
The Dark Wraith wishes only those who supported this war would have to live with them in the years and decades to come.
yes, i have read, "the prince"
," and even studied some of the era he writes about. it was a fascinating, brutal time. one lesson i took is that, like war, statecraft is just that; a craft that can be learned. i learned to embrace the rules and the quaint codes of honor. i saw in them, my only hope of redemption. the rules aren't there for the good, decent people who find themselves at war. they are there for that six to eight percent who, at the slightest perception of ambiguity, will not only open pandora's box of horror, they would do so with glee, and be quite satisfied with their results. i don't think mr. bush has dealt with his "brute squad" because he lacks the sophistication and detachment true machiavellian technique demands. he doesn't grasp that there might be something odious about supporting the viet nam war while pulling every string, calling in every favor, to avoid having to serve himself. he actually believes he served . those of us in the boonies of the a shah and the mud of khe sanh might disagree but REMFs like him always treated us like chumps anyway. (i still hates me some REMFs) i have retreated from any hope of salvaging something worthwhile from iraq. the current administration went into this adventure like corporate raiders on a stock deal. they went after iraq like it was good business. they expected things to go smoothly and start spitting out $30 a barrel oil from now on. had they bothered to listen to those of us who actually have seen combat we would have told them that, with very few exceptions, war is bad business. it's wasteful and destructive.
mr. benson will cease ranting for the moment. he's baking bread and there's a ball of dough in serious need of punching.
Yes, Stephen, the dough needs punching.
I would modestly suggest, however, that you refrain from extending that good food preparation skill to the extent of flogging said dough. I have on occasion found myself taking out my frustrations concerning modernity on the hapless food I was preparing. This is especially possible when flattening beef brisket down for chicken fried steak, although I can envision the same overly zealous tenderizing effort being applied to entirely guiltless dough, as well.
The Dark Wraith might consider investing in a punching bag.
Dark Wraith,
I be correcticated! You am right!
I must find my 10th grade English teacher and admonish her. Maybe she'll change my grade back to a respectable 'B+'.
Humbly,
FT
Have that English teacher speak to me. I'll straighten the matter out.
The Dark Wraith enjoys a flurry of academic discourse every now and then.
Wait a minute.
'correcticated'?!
The Dark Wraith thinks that sounds vaguely painful as Hell.
good evening dark wraith:
just a short report from the kitchen. all loaves survived. cracked wheat, cinnamon raisin, and (my favorite) sourdough french. the baking's done for the time being. i'm still in something of a funk. i'll pull out of it. setting up a batch of yoghurt for the week too.
even while engaged in activities of high domesticity mr. benson maintains that he has seen way too much to ever be square.
Home-made cinnamon raison bread?!
The Dark Wraith will be right over.
Good Morning Dark Wraith,
..'none' is a plural pronoun.
...and how odd that None, while it equals zero, is considered plural.
'correcticated'?!
Sounds like you need a double ended something to accomplish that!
:)
Good afternoon, SB Gypsy.
In mathematics, 'none' is different from zero. Even in common language, the difference is reflected: zero is a balance between negatives and positives, but none means utter absence. Think about this: the loser says to his friend, "I don't git none from my woman." He is, in so declaring his involuntary abstinence, declaring that the pleasurable experience is absent from his life.
There is a nuance of distinction between that and an enumerated count, as conveyed in his friend's reply, "I git it from my partner twenty-three times a week on average." This fellow is declaring that he has engaged a counting protocol for pootang and from that has proceeded even to the point of carrying out a mathematical formula on the result—specifically, he has used his weekly count to calculate a weekly average.
The fellow who gets 'none' is certainly not in the mood to calculate an average, much less more complicated statistical results like variance, trend-line analysis, or even a basic Pearson correlation coëfficient of variation about the first statistical moment (which is, in this case, the mean of the distribution). Our hapless Prince Beatitoff gets 'none': it does not exist in his life.
How's that for an explanation of the difference between 'zero' and 'none'?
The Dark Wraith teaches real mathematics for real people.
Dark Wraith,
Zero is just a stop on the way from fiscal responsibility to massive debt.
Our representatives have zero fiscal responsibility, but none (not one) has (have) any common sense.
And while we may have had a surplus of a trillion and then run up a debt of a trillion, an average amount doesn't matter because then we have zero money or none. Of course, in English, I don't yet understand how we can 'HAVE' nothing or none or zero! But I'm sure our President could explain it.
If this makes any sense, I apologize.
That he waited too long to carry out the final step is telling.
I have not read The Prince, but it's clear that he is not the tyrant who hired the thug.
He is a wholly-owned and created product of the thug.
- oddjob
the current administration went into this adventure like corporate raiders on a stock deal. they went after iraq like it was good business. they expected things to go smoothly and start spitting out $30 a barrel oil from now on. had they bothered to listen to those of us who actually have seen combat we would have told them that, with very few exceptions, war is bad business.
But then again, as you said Stephen, REMF's (& the entire DC Repub. leadership is constituted of such) always treated you guys like chumps anyway.......
- oddjob
If the Dark Wraith is in a mood to teach a little more history of English, oddjob would dearly love an explanation for the existence of English umlauts (cf. coëxistence, naïve, etc.) One only sees them very occasionally, but I have never encountered an explanation for their existence.
Do you have one?
- oddjob
Good evening, OddJob.
In Old and Middle English, every consonant and vowel was pronounced. The reason was that the written language represented very closely the spoken language. There was no such thing as a vowel pair that represented a sound of its own.
That trick was almost wholly an invention of the semi-literate peoples of later 15th Century English speakers in England. At that time, letter writing was becoming quite popular among such people, and this was happening at the same time the spoken language was in significant transition. This transition is now misnamed "The Great Vowel Shift," but it wasn't only the vowels that were changing their spoken forms: consonants, too, were being pronounced in a noticably and distinctively different manner. In simplified description, the whole "shift" was about where vowels and consonants were being formed in the mouth. In Old and Middle English the mouth cavity was much more hollowed out in speaking, and vowels and consonants were pronounced far back in the cavity or low on the tongue. The shift moved these "back" vowels forward and/or higher; and consonants followed. As such, the mouth didn't have to hollow out as much to make proper sounds.
Now, the new sounds in the language were creating a bit of difficulty because some of these sounds didn't have traditional letter representations. This was especially true for some of the vowel sounds, which really weren't well represented by the typical a, e, i, o, and u. (Actually, the u and v were in reverse roles back then.) Worse was that some of the new vowel sounds had a distinctive flavor of two (or more) old sounds in them, one sliding into the other. (That "slide" would have been unheard of in older forms of English.)
Okay, we have semi-literate people who know that spelling should follow sounding rules, but the new sounds don't have letters that particularly well represent them. What did people start doing as a way of representing these new sounds? Why, they started putting vowels together to represent new sounds. At first, there were all kinds of variations for a single new sound, but fairly quickly, conventions began to set in, and so was invented the Modern English vowel pairs called "diphthongs" to represent single sounds.
Ah, but sometimes—every so often—two vowel sounds, each distinctive, are actually made, one immediately after the other. A vowel pair is now conventionally supposed to represent a single sound; so how do you put two vowels together with the explicit intent that the second vowel is to be pronounced separately from the first vowel sound?
Well, of course, you use a diäcritical mark over the second vowel to signal that its sound is independent of the first!
That, OddJob, is why that "umlaut" is over the second vowel in a word like coëxistence. (And by the way, the two dots are not called an "umlaut" when used for this purpose.)
The Dark Wraith leaves a little bit of the information for further research by the interested reader.
(And by the way, the two dots are not called an "umlaut" when used for this purpose.)
Danke schön!
- oddjob
morning dw.
you do put the most interesting and informative stuff in comments. well, in posts too. i can google "diacritical marks" and find "diaerisis," but never would have thought to do so on my own.
Good morning Dark Wraith.
So, do you think cinnamon will be good on crow feathers?
Personally, I find that crow feathers really do not go well with any type of spice. In fact, crow feathers simply can not be improved upon. They are horrible no matter what attempts are made to cover their flavor.
Now, mind you, I speak with much personal experience in this area.
Oh, and would picking crow feathers out of one's teeth with a crow feather count as irony?
Rook will now sit back in my comfortable desk chair and await the intellectual and logical gymastics sure to insue. I have my coffee (black; no cream and sugar thank-you-very-much!) and am contemplating popcorn.
Oh, and the whole "may or may not be indicted" prophecy? That was cheap. You might as well find yourself a street corner and put out the red light. Just be careful and make sure it is not Jeff Gannon's territory.......
just adding in a note of concern about the return of torturers. i don't oppose torture on any moral ground (as previously stated it would not be ground i can occupy in good conscience) but, on a pragmatic level, i oppose it merely because it is ineffective. torture is handy for producing results you want. if you are say, an inquisitor under torquemada, you might need somebody to confess to being a secret jew. using the tools of your trade you manage to get the confession within hours (minutes should have sufficed, but hey, fun's fun). so, should someone in today's army need a cab driver to confess to being an al queada operative, i guess a quick trip to a prison staffed by garden variety sadists would be in order. and yet. . .when i look at an operation that has as a hallmark inept, innaccurate, incomplete, and in general, spotty intelligence, torture would not be my first option. the most effective intelligence gathering tool we had in viet nam was a program called "chu hoi" which translates as "welcome home" or "open arms". if a member of the viet cong (although they were finished as a fighting force after tet) or the NVA came to us we would tell them "give us some decent information, something useful in the field today and you get yourself a ticket to the big px and you can buy yourself a liquor store in orange county." as soon as those words left your mouth, you weren't talking to a communist any more; you were talking to a small businessman. the actions of abu grahib, guantanamo, and those dark places they won't let us see will come back to haunt us. the damage goes all directions. torture corrupts every process it touches. the product it produces is not reliable, the people (victims and torturers alike) are permanently damaged goods. george washington took one of his better moral stands during the revolution by forbidding the torture and mistreatment of hessian captives. his position was that the issue was not about who the hessians were, it was about who the rebels were. by the end of the conflict, the hessians had a huge problem with desertion. their rank and file knew the rebels would treat them better than their own officers. there was farmland for the taking in western pennsylvania among german speaking people. a better prospect than going home for many of them (hat tip to david hackett fisher, washington's crossing)
Good afternoon, Stephen Benson.
You are right on the money... as it were. Chu hoi was more successful than just about any human intel technique we used in Southeast Asia, and yet almost no one has ever even heard of it. There's a reason for that, of course: it's no fun for the sadists, who want to keep trying the same Medieval tactics in war after war just because... well, just because it's gotta work sooner or later.
Torturers in the Middle Ages were quite successful at extracting from their victims admissions of speaking and actually seeing Satan, himself. They didn't, of course, but the torture successfully extracted what was in reality patent lie.
But the neo-cons love the idea that all things brutish and old-fashioned—unspeakable war, appeals to hateful religious beliefs, bullying diplomacy, lousy philosophers, torture—are simply so much better than any of the refined, civilized tools that modernity had struggled so hard to build and learn to use.
Such a shameful lot, the neo-cons.
The Dark Wraith wishes upon them their own kind in their Eternal Reward.
Ah, there you are, Rook.
Note my comment to your article.
The Dark Wraith carves his initials upon the supple yet disturbingly fair posterior.
Good afternoon, Dread Pirate Roberts.
Actually, that you were able to know what search word would give the appropriate hit on Google is a tribute to your base of knowledge. A person could spin for hours on a search engine if he or she were to use a keyword other than "diäcritical" to track down the answer to the problem.
The Dark Wraith does enjoy rambling on about the English language, though, doesn't he?
Good afternoon Dark Wraith.
It the CD field, what has happened here is called hiding behind a technicality. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we are not in a court of law. Sure, the court of public opinion, or more accurately, the court of blogger opinion is in session. However, technicalities are not admissible in this court. As such, just because I used 'maybe' instead of the more assertive "will be' in my earlier comment, I stand by my claim of your playing it cheap. So, here is the actual quote, quite willingly taken out of context because it would otherwise not be any fun:
Here's the inside scoop. Karl Rove will be indicted next week.
Or he won't be indicted next week.
Now, over at my blog where I am on an indefinite hiatus you left the following comment (click on the link people, I am whoring for hits, even while on hiatus).
Now, the following is a quote from said comment (ya I know, I sent you to the comment and now supply part of it here, bite me).
The sources in the Washington Post story are quite likely the same as the sources in Jason Leopold's breathless account of April 28, an article with a prediction that turned out to be incorrect on its face: no indictment was issued last week. In fact, no indictment has been issued today, either. Reporters have reported that an indictment is imminent, but reporters are not grand jurors: the latter vote on indictments, the former (at least in this case) tell them what they're going to do.
One hint of what's going on in the current flurry comes in a story published late last week claiming that Libby was planning to call Rove as a witness. Such a defense tactic as calling Rove would give a prosecutor a whole lot of incentive to countervail with leaks designed to warn the defense that such a witness would be a bad idea.
Wonderful supposition, all that. Quite eloquently written, I might add. However, it is missing one important component-a source. Until then, we are talking about opinion. Alibied, one that does not sound as if it is muffled by a desk chair. Perhaps an opinion formulated during lecture?
Okay, now I am just being plain rude. Please forgive my snark.
Well, anyway, back to my original point.....
Wait. What was my point? Damn, I hate when that happens. It's that bright red light of your's DW. Did you have to get one that is so damn bright? It's breaking my concentration.
Ah yes, now I remember. At my blog you ended your comment stating:
Now, all of that obviously heart-filling rhetoric aside, suffer me to quote verbatim from my article, "The Gaming Game," published last week:
Here's the inside scoop. Karl Rove will be indicted next week.
No clearer statement could have been made on my part.
Except that you left out the full context of the quote as I so thoughtfully supplied at the beginning of this comment.
Have you been wadding into freeper land again on your own? You know it's not good to test yourself like that. Remember, strength in numbers, strength in numbers. Unless they are counted by Diabold.
Now, of course this is just an opinion, you venturing into the muddy waters of the freepi. But it appears their poor logic and intellectually dishonest technics have rub off.
Either that, or your really don't know the definition of verbatim.
Oh, and "NEENER-NEENER." What is that? Rhetoric 101?
Rook now turns around and moons all, showing that no initials are carved upon the supple yet fair posterior.
What? There's a word missing? Guess I operate from the same definition of verbatim as DW.......
Now, let's all wait for the score on Dark Wraith's comment at my post:
8, 7, 8, 6, 7, 10.
10!?!?
That damn Russian judge. I guess I should have paid him what he wanted. It's just that Gannon was unavailable. Something about being booked at the White House.
Is it my imagination, or did Rook come through here awhile ago?
Ah. That was Rook in that last post.
Huh.
Now, I'm beginning to really hope Leopold and the Washington Post are right about Rove getting indicted right away. The stress from the suspense is starting to take its toll on bloggers.
Cripe, it's even beginning to affect me: just awhile ago, I could have sworn Rook's was ranting right here on this blog.
The Dark Wraith needs another cup of coffee.
Hehehehe......
It's probably because you put cream and sugar in your coffee. Unnatural ingredients can cause low grade hallucinations. Or they trigger flashbacks. It's all dependent on your history.
Well, and your current lifestyle.
Good evening, Guy Andrew Hall.
I use no sweetener, but I do use half-and-half: just a hint. At the strength I brew the bean, I need that just to keep the coffee from removing layers of flesh from my tongue and throat.
I should point out here that I haven't had a serious throat infection in years. Nothing much can live in toxic waste zones, you see.
It wasn't always this way, though. I used to put a giant pinch of ground coffee between my cheek and gum. Then I got into "jolts," as we used to call them: three shots of freshly brewed espresso, throw in one shot of ice-cold Coca-Cola, then dump the contents staight into the mouth, head back, and swallow. The real skill was holding back the instant rush of incontinence that inevitably attended this eye-opening celebration of myo-cardial infarctation.
There was also that weird twitch in the left hind leg, sort of like the one people have with some kinds of strokes and certain pro-war speeches by draft-dodging Republicans.
Times are different, now, though: I tend to devote myself to the less stressful lifestyle: daily Bible readings, the quilting circle, the occasional mind control over Bill Gates to make him particularly amorous around 64-bit processing software, and occasional ritualistic neo-con sacrifices.
I take comfort in simple pleasures, Rook. Spending quality time in the Blogosphere enlivens my spirit even as it edifies my existence.
Consistency. That's what it's all about. Sort of goes along with taking on truthout.org and now the Washington Pest: they have to be right on just one day about Rove being indicted; I, on the other hand, have to be right every day about him not getting indicted.
But even if I end up finally being wrong—which could very well be the case—I'm still right.
How, you might ask, could I say such a thing?
That's easy, my good and fellow blogger. Rove, Libby, Cheney, Bush, and the rest of their lowly kind survived long enough to wreck the 21st Century for America. Whatever Fitzgerald ends up accomplishing, he will have accomplished it far too late.
The rule of law failed.
More to the point, the neo-cons won.
The Dark Wraith wonders when exactly it was that the Democrats could last claim such a tragedy for their collective vita.
I would venture to say that would have occurred either during the Johnson or Roosevelt Administrations, DW.
- oddjob
Well, yes, OddJob, I'd say Johnson could get a decent share of the vote for catastrophic policy choices on some notable fronts.
The Dark Wraith did, however, rather appreciate Johnson's sense of anguish about it all.
DW,
Maybe if someone picked up Bush by his ears...
Good morning, Father Tyme.
Not without latex gloves on.
The Dark Wraith doesn't like getting his hands greasy.
"father tyme blogged...DW,
Maybe if someone picked up Bush by his ears..."
Or, if Bush showed us his latest "war wounds" scars...oh, that's right, he already has:
"BUSH Missing Top Two Front Teeth. For Real, No Joke w/ Pic"
http://tinyurl.com/g7e2j
Not this analysis changes Dark Wraith's predictions, or rationale for those predictions, but it is an analysis from a "harder" source than Jason Leopold.
Oh, and this is something DW ought to check out.
- oddjob
In other news, the Carter years are making a reappearance.
- oddjob
Good evening, OddJob.
If I could get a breather long enough to finish some of the graphics, I would publish my article on what's happening with the dollar. Right now, I'm gettting pounded with finals week details, but I want to get the article up and into the stream of news and analysis since so little is being said about this situation.
I see the brief mentions of the slide of the dollar and the soaring price of gold, but it's the underlying causal factors that are making me lose sleep. As I've noted previously, I'm not thrilled with Chicken Little predictions, but this is bad, and it's bad in a way that our current government and Federal Reserve have no demonstrated capacity to manage because they have no demonstrated capacity to grasp that this isn't merely some return to Classical economics era commodity market swings and self-correcting mechanisms.
If the Fed and the Congress don't coördinate a serious, long-term response to this, we're going to be in for the ride of the century; and the only thing that would stop it is the almost unthinkable (and, no, I'm not talking about anything political).
The funny part (if there is, indeed, anything funny about this) is that the Chinese are beginning to just barely grasp their own perilous situation, which is only partly related to the U.S. dollar situation. I honestly don't think the Chinese really want to come fully to grips with what they must do to fill in the grave they've been digging for themselves for over a decade; so, like the American neo-cons, the Chinese "market reform" Communists (God, now there's a term that makes me feel strange using) are trying to do little tiny things around the edges of a gaping cauldron without admitting that there's a gaping cauldron trying to swallow them. Truth be told, though, I think the Chinese Communists are far more afraid of their populace than the American neo-con radicals are of ours. That might mean the Chinese will manage to find within themselves the wherewithal to handle their side of this emerging mess, while the American neo-cons will keep their heads planted firmly in the sand... until that sand hardens into concrete, at which point we'll be able to go up with impunity to them in their awkward state and deliver to their protruding backsides that long-deserved, swift paddling.
The Dark Wraith is drifting into economically inappropriate metaphors.
This looks like it will keep Fitzgerald busy for a while.
- oddjob
Hello Dark Wraith: First, I will say that I would be interested in reading your article on the falling dollar, when you get it finished. I also saw the story on the price of gold going up to $700 an ounce, and I'm wondering if we're heading into a period of stagflation similar to the Carter years. I was just a kid during the Carter years--I was 11 years old in 1976, but I remember the high gas prices, gold prices rising, the talk of blue collar manufacturing jobs leaving, the Fed's raising interest rates, and a general malaise during that time period. And look at what we have today under the Bush administration--high gas prices, gold prices rising, the outsourcing of white collar American jobs, the Fed's raising interest rates, and the American public now has a fear that the country is heading the wrong way. It is scary to watch this event unfold twice in your lifetime, and understand the implications of it. It is even more terrifying that President Bush either has no clue as to the lessons of history of the Carter years, or has rejected those lessons due to his own hubris as The Deciderer.
This country is in such trouble.
More than most people could imagine, Eric.
The Dark Wraith is becoming concerned beyond what he would care to be.
Well, now you simply must finish it (even if it's delayed by getting final grades in, etc., etc.)
You're making it sound like you can see the way to a wholesale implosion of the dollar, as well as the cycle of government debt and repayment that keeps everything going. That of course would lead to a worldwide depression.
- oddjob
Well, yes, OddJob, but only if you look at the more optimistic scenarios.
The Dark Wraith is being a very dark wraith, of course.
Oh, and since we're on such rosy topics, what's been happening to the "yield curve" lately?
- oddjob
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oops. more info. a bit over 5 seconds to load in the browser with no cache. dsl @ 1.5 msomething.
"Rove Informs White House He Will Be Indicted"
By Jason Leopold,
Fri May 12th, 2006 at 03:59:41 PM EDT
Truthout
http://tinyurl.com/okl5k
Good evening, Peter of Lone Tree.
Jason Leopold is a living example of the old saying among weathermen: If you predict rain every day, someday you'll be right.
Mr. Leopold's jackpot number is sure to come up, and then most people will forget how many times he came up snake eyes.
The corollary to that is, of course, that not many will remember how many times I was right before Mr. Leopold hit the Lotto.
The Dark Wraith is cool with that, though.
And while I'm in the mood to be unapologetic, Peter, let me note something, here.
Jason Leopold is reporting information that would be known only to a small group within the White House; so if he really does have an inside source, it's an inside source at the White House.
That means Jason Leopold is playing right next to, if not directly in, the fire of Karl Rove's disinformation machine, itself.
That doesn't mean Mr. Leopold is wrong; it just means that it's always best to think not just about the story, but also about the story behind the story.
The Dark Wraith just wanted to point that out.